Tennessee legislature repeals religious defense for parents who hurt their children by withholding medical care

We have two pieces of good news today from the American South—both from Tennessee. One refers to the subject of reports in The Tennesseean and the Knoxville News Sentinel: the Tennessee legislature has repealed a state law that gives parents exemptions from hurting their children by withholding medical care in favor of faith healing. As do many states, Tennessee has such an exemption on the books, though it’s a felony crime to hurt your kids if you don’t have a religious motivation. As The Tennessean reported previously,

It is a crime in Tennessee to fail to provide medical care to children, with an exception, known as the Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act, for parents who want to rely on “spiritual means through prayer alone,” according to state code. State Sen. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, filed SB 1761 to repeal the exception.

The current code reads: “Nothing in this part shall be construed to mean a child is abused, neglected, or endangered, or abused, neglected or endangered in an aggravated manner, for the sole reason the child is being provided treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone, in accordance with the tenets or practices of a recognized church or religious denomination by a duly accredited practitioner of the recognized church or religious denomination, in lieu of medical or surgical treatment.”

The bill applies to treatments and does not apply to vaccinations, although that may come up in the course of debate, Briggs said.

A Republican! How unexpected!

These laws are not uncommon. They were originally put in place by the states in 1974 as a result of a new federal policy mandating that states would not receive government money to prevent child abuse unless they also enacted laws allowing these religious exemptions. That was unconscionable and, in fact, the requirement was rescinded in 1983. But in many states the laws remained on the books. As a result, many children died, and still die, from religiously-based medical neglect; and their parents are either let off the hook or given only a slap on the wrist. As always, as with vaccination—47 of the 50 states allow religious exemption from getting children vaccinated before attending public school—religion gets an exemption that endangers people’s lives.

In 1996, however, Congress enacted a law stating that the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) did not include “a Federal requirement that a parent or guardian provide a child any medical service or treatment against the religious beliefs of the parent or guardian.” [42 USC 5106i] Furthermore, Sen. Dan Coats, R-Indiana, and Congressman Bill Goodling, R-Pennsylvania, claimed during floor discussion that parents have a First Amendment right to withhold medical care from children.

Unbelievable! And Bill Clinton signed that law! But the results stand: in most places if you injure or kill your child because you deem conventional medical care contrary to your religion, you don’t get punished. As I noted in my Slate piece a year ago, “Faith healing kills children,”

Well, make that 42 now, for six days ago the Tennessee House concurred with the state Senate in repealing the noxious Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act. As the News Sentinel reports:

The repeal bill, Senate Bill 1761, is sponsored by Sen. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, a cardiac surgeon, and Rep. Andrew Farmer, R-Sevierville, a lawyer. It won unanimous Senate approval in March and an 85-1 vote Thursday in the House and now goes to Gov. Bill Haslam, who’s expected to sign it into law.

. . . Briggs and Farmer introduced the bill this year in an attempt to repeal the exemption. Briggs cited his experience with a similar case years ago, when he was a general surgeon in another state and a teen boy was brought to see him with a ruptured appendix. His parents initially opposed surgery on religious grounds but later agreed to treatment.

The bill was backed by a Kentucky-based group, Children’s Healthcare Is Legal Duty (CHILD), that works for repeal of similar spiritual treatment exemptions across the country. Its President Rita Swan issued a statement thanking lawmakers for repealing the exemption in Tennessee.

Rita Swan is a hero, and has been recognized as such by the Freedom from Religion Foundation (they also filed a brief in the Tennessee case), which gave Swan its Lifetime Achievement Award. Swan and her husband, once Christian Scientists, let their son Matthew die of meningitis in 1977 because they were obeying the no-doctors tenet of their faith. Since then, Swan, horrified at what she did, founded CHILD and has worked tirelessly to get these religious laws overturned. But progress is slow.

I’m hoping now that a Southern state has removed its medical-exemption laws (or will when the governor signs the bill, as he surely will), other states will follow suit. It’s absolutely unbelievable that over 80% of American states allow parents to injure their children—children too young to enact their own decisions—by favoring religious healing over treatment that works. To me, this is one of the most noxious and injurious results of America’s privileging of religion. It kills people! Can any person, even a Regressive liberal, be in favor of those laws?

If you’re an American, it’s likely that your state has such exemptions (see the CHILD list to check). Do what you can to repeal them, and, if you can, donate money to CHILD, which is fighting the good fight.

And now—on to vaccination.!

Here are the states with religious exemptions (from CHILD); click to enlarge:

Washington, a liberal state on many issues (For example they allow physician assisted dying) has pockets of religious cults. That could explain why the state is colored black – “Allows religious exemptions for negligent homicide, manslaughter, or capitol murder.”

The notion of the exemption is fairly libertarian to begin with, so it’s not too surprising (IMO) to see the states that are very liberal supporting them. This is probably one of those political topics on which the two ends of the spectrum join up to attack the middle.

Oh. The wrong definition was funnier. Death — by death penalty — not so much. Thank you for clarifying, though. I should have known that. I’d just forgotten. Honest, the other was somehow so fun to consider!

For vaccinations, Mississippi should be a model for all states. They are #1 in vaccination rates for kids and it’s not even close. In 2014, 99.7 percent of the state’s kindergartners were fully vaccinated and the state makes vaccines available to all, regardless of income, race, or location. There are no religious exemptions, vaccinations are required for all children planning to attend public or private schools, and medical exemptions are allowed only when the local health officer determines that the exemption would not cause undue risk to the community. In 1994 Mississippi expanded their vaccination policy to include infants and toddlers, where again they lead the nation in rates.

These laws were largely a result of one man’s efforts, the head of the state’s Department of Health, Alton Cobb, who made vaccination accessibility a top priority, and held his post for 20 years, from 1973 to 1993. Of course, the state’s powerful religious conservatives have made many attempts to weaken the mandate, but, so far, it stands.

The US has a mixed history with mandatory vaccination; it’s never really been the entire law of the land. We mandate vaccination for immigrants seeking a green card, and for military personnel. We’ve mandated smallpox* and I believe (but could be wrong about) polio vaccination in the past. However AFAIK the modern sequence of vaccines that started in the ’50s has never been truly mandatory. So it’s not too surprising that most states have exemptions. That’s just the way we’ve always done it.

*Incidentally, smallpox was the origin of the “need it to go to public school” rule, but at the time and place that policy was first adopted, public school attendance was mandatory, so it amounted to a mandatory vaccination for all children. We have since then kept the school requirement but have forgotten the whole reason why that was chosen as a distribution rule – because doing so essentially made child vaccination mandatory.

Once again we have people who want to give a zygote personhood status being perfectly fine with actual children suffering and dying needlessly. If only the so-called pro-life people would put their efforts into supporting an organization like CHILD.

Yeah, but it’s not the state’s job or goal to have people leave religion. Its the state’s goal to have less children die. So the clearly superior choice as far as the state is concerned should be the former.

The problem with proposition #2 is this: these types of fundamentalist believers are pretty much immune to the mental process of, “Oh- the evidence shows that this isn’t working; guess I’ll try something different.” The “hits” (“successful” faith healings) will be remembered, the “misses” forgotten, minimized, or ignored. They can always say that the prayers of the parents were not sincere enough, or fall back on those old saws of, “Jesus must have needed him in Heaven” or the one that automatically rejects all attempts at examination of the facts: “Who can fathom the purposes of God?”

Proof positive that the TeaOP is schizophrenic: they try to make the Bible the state book, then turn around and do this….

My suspicions are that there’s got to be something to do with Federal money in all of this for it to happen- I can’t see Repubs being concerned enough for others’ well-being to do it, “out of the blue”, out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s possible the pharmaceutical companies had a little talk with the legislators…..